


Nothing In The World Could Really Matter (& I'd Still Love You)

by spiders_n



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: 4+1, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Consent is Sexy, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Kinda, MJ is a budding soft femdom, Masturbation, Mentions of Death, OnlyFans, Peter Parker has a fat ass, Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:34:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28554708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiders_n/pseuds/spiders_n
Summary: Peter is MJ's best friend, her dearest confidant, and despite her better judgment her closest family member.Then one day she sees his ass in some tight pants and all hell breaks loose in her mind and it turns out he is also, very begrudgingly on her part, the love of her life.orFour times MJ has a boner (metaphorical and otherwise) for Peter, and one time he does something about it.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Comments: 11
Kudos: 106
Collections: Spideychelle Secret Santa - 2k20





	Nothing In The World Could Really Matter (& I'd Still Love You)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spideysmjs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spideysmjs/gifts).



> Happiest of Winter Holidays to SpideysMJ's. I'm sorry for the tardiness, but genuinely grateful to be able to get it to you nevertheless. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> TW// Death of a family member.

**I.**  
  


“Wait, Pete try these on. I think they’re actually a better cut for the selection of shoes you’ve got.” MJ calls to him, making her way into the changing area of the boutique. 

Peter peaks his head around the curtain to look at the navy chinos in her hand and then meets her eye with a tentative look, exactly like the one he’s given her every other time she’s suggested a bit of a pricer item. “Those are blue. I don’t have a blue blazer to go with it.” 

MJ shrugs, “So wear it with a cardigan instead. The dress code is business casual, you’re allowed to go in without a blazer every now and again.” 

He frowns in response, clearly not entirely convinced that the clothes will pair together quite the way she’s suggesting, but she doesn’t budge, instead she raises her eyebrows in challenge. “Pete you literally asked me to come here so I would make you buy nice things instead of going for the shittier option and having to replace it in two months. This is a nice thing that will go well with a lot of what you already have. Just try them on. You’ll see.” 

“Fine,” he sighs, reaching an arm out to take them. “I’ll give them a shot.” 

She flashes a triumphant grin and tosses the pants to him. “The skinny leg on them will look nicer with the boots you’ve got, and I feel like it’ll lengthen you a bit.” 

“The boot-cut pants I’ve already tried on won’t pair well with my boots?” He grumbles from behind the curtain.

“You don’t have the right build for bootcut pants. You’ll look like a youth pastor. You need a skinny or straight leg in order to look like you’ve made an effort.” 

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll see.” His grumpiness bleeding into his tone, but MJ doesn’t mind it. Peter is so rarely grumpy that when he is in one of his moods, it kind of pleases her to mess with him. She’s not entirely sure why. There’s a bit of shuffling on the other side for a moment before he speaks again. “Em? What size did you pick up? I don’t think these fit.” 

MJ’s eyebrows scrunch as she turns her head back in the direction of his dressing room. “30/28, like you normally wear. Are they too short?” She asks, taking a few steps forward, stopping only a foot from the curtain. 

“Uh no, actually the length is perfect, and you’re right, these will look nice with the boots from Zara, but um— well look.” He pulls back the curtain once again and turns around slightly to reveal his predicament. Put simply, his ass and thighs are just too big for the pants. Not his waist necessarily, because MJ can see that the pants buttoned just fine, but the fabric of the chinos is strained around the two globes of his butt and the four or five inches below it that encase his upper thighs.

“Woah” Her eyes grow wide as she takes it in. Peter is standing in front of her, shirtless and toned with the kind of back muscles that only come from hours of swinging around the city every day, followed up with a perfect and very spankable round butt. MJ bites her lip into her mouth without even realizing it. “Hello...” she remarks lowly, giving him a once over before looking up at him. “That is one prize-winning peach.” 

Peter rolls his eyes. “That’s what you say every time you see my ass.”

“And every time is better than the last,” she defends, looking back down at it. “I mean that’s… That is an absolute dump truck, dude. How do you swing that thing around the city?” 

“Em, oh my god. Can we focus on the actual problem here?” Peter looks at her with a mix of exasperation and embarrassment, which is typically what he does when she comments on his ass, much to her delight. But this time there is also a hint of desperation, which reminds her that the whole reason she’d agreed to come with him today was to make it easier for him to spend money on nice clothes for his new job, which is something that really stresses him out, not just because he wants to look nice for the job, but because he can’t actually afford a single thing he’s buying. Hince the grumpiness. 

“Sorry. I know I’m here for moral support, not ass cheerleading. I just…” she glances back down at it. “Got distracted. I will go find you a larger size. Presumably in the section marked ‘Dummy Thicc’ next to Big and Tall.” She giggles, turning to walk back out into the store before she can get in trouble for the comment. 

When she comes back, a new pair of navy chinos in hand, Peter is behind the curtain again, so she makes her way to the stall and sticks them in through the crack between the fabric and the wall. 

“Thanks,” Peter says, grabbing them from her. “I’m not sure what shirt I’d wear with this.  
My instinct is to go for a white but I’m such a mess, I’ll probably stain it within the first—” He peaks his face back around the divider. “Em? Are you coming in?” 

MJ turns from where she’d been distracted by a dress hanging up on the hook for the stall next door. “Oh uh, yeah okay.” She slips back behind the curtain with him.

“I was saying that I’m not sure which of these shirts to wear with these pants because I feel like I’ll ruin the white shirt super quickly, and that’s the only thing that I could think of that goes with it.” He continues hopping out of the ill-fitting pants until he’s just standing there, nearly naked, save for the boxer-briefs he’s wearing. 

He looks good. Very good, the kind of good that’s making it hard for MJ to focus on what he’s saying, which is weird because MJ isn’t really ever fazed by Peter’s undeniably good body. She’s noticed it because, well, _how could you not_ , but it’s not a thing she ever thinks about. Peter is just the dork she did AcaDec with in highschool that somehow swindled his way into becoming her best friend after years of never leaving her alone (not that she’d tried very hard to make him.) He is not hot in the way that matters to MJ. Or at least, he never has been. She’s seen him in various states of undress, at pool parties, in Instagram thirst traps, changing into the spidey-suit in a back alley, and one memorable time when he’d used his google home to call her and ask her to uncuff him from his headboard after he’d accidentally dropped the key while masturbating, but it’s never made a dent in her very purposeful and firm platonic barrier around their friendship. Peter Parker makes her feel frustrated, annoyed, at times homicidal, and admittedly more often than not, supported and cherished in a way few others know how to make her feel, but Peter Parker does not make her feel horny. 

Except that apparently, for some reason known only to the god of untimely horniness, he does right now. 

“Uh, yeah, um—” She clears her throat and forces her eyes up to his head. “Salmon. Or um…” she glances at the curtain behind her. “Maroon. You could go with a gray and keep it simple.” She literally shakes herself to stop the stumbling and get back to the calm cool MJ that she knows herself to be. “Honestly, you’re gonna look incredible in any color. You’re you. Just walk in there and wow them with the knowledge and if all else fails wear your tightest pair of slacks and let that thang work its magic.” 

Peter pulls up the pants, buttons and zips and then turns to look at himself, taking a deep breath. “You’re right,” he says begrudgingly, trying to calm himself down. “I’ll do great because I am smart and I am capable.” He catches MJ’s eye’s in the mirror. “And I can always fuck my way to the top if I’m not.”

“That’s the spirit!” MJ nods, reaching forward to smack his ass for good measure, a thing that she’s done before, teasingly. The reverb on it is more satisfying than it should be. She tries very hard not to think about it. 

**II.**

The first time it happened, it was a complete accident. 

MJ'd had a long day doing several different projects around her new apartment to make it feel homier, aided by a few friends (Peter, Gwen, Johnny, and Ned) and a couple hundred dollars worth of Target and Ikea decor. After the tornado of projects had reached their natural conclusions and she’d kicked everyone out, she decided to reward herself with some me-time

She took a long hot shower, drank some tea, made the time to deep condition her hair, watched a couple of episodes of the Great British Baking Show, and then finally sunk into bed with a fully charged vibrator and her phone open to one of her favorite subscriptions on onlyfans. 

The profile was called BisexualSubHub, and it normally posted excellent videos and pictures featuring two of the 10 different alternating content creators dressed up in various slutty costumes and acting out different dirty scenes. All of the videos were centered around masculine people servicing and being serviced by their doms, and it was a wonderland that MJ found herself visiting and revisiting whenever she had some time to herself. 

That day though, the profile had posted a video with a new female dom and MJ’s favorite sub of the whole group. He was muscular and hot, but also very dorky and had an air of innocence that was very enjoyable to watch be corrupted by his own desperation. Normally he partnered with men for his videos, which was definitely a _thing_ that MJ had noticed herself getting into, but this video was with a tall, long-legged woman with golden brown skin. 

MJ didn’t even stop to think about it before pressing unlock on the video, paying the extra $18 it cost, and flipping her vibrator to its lowest setting. She brought the larger head down to the already wet slit between her pussy lips, running it from the top to the bottom in a teasing manner as she pressed play on the video. 

The air of the video was charged from the first second, the man and woman were sitting next to one another, looking into each other's eyes and touching one another, not necessarily in an intimate place, but in a way that was intimate nonetheless. The woman’s fingers drew gentle lines up the underside of the man’s forearms, the man’s hands resting against her knees, sneaking up her thighs in gentle brushes that seemed to be making him blush deliciously. Then, after about 45 seconds of just staring and touching, the man asked permission to kiss the woman, which she granted. Their lips met in a kiss that was slow but deep enough that MJ could see their tongues brush together. She had to resist the temptation to press her vibrator directly to her clit as she watched them make out passionately for another minute or so. 

The video continued at the pace it started with, sluggish but also intense. It progressed into more and more illicit images. The man kissed down the woman's neck once he was allowed to after asking if he could and being denied several times, a close up of the woman’s hands slowly jerking him off as she whispered a litany of teasing affirmations about how much she was enjoying watching him come undone, him playing with her nipples until finally exploding into an orgasm at her loud guttural moans, painting his own groin and the woman’s with his cum. The whole scene culminated in the man looking up from between the woman’s legs at the camera with big, earnest eyes and asking her in a voice that made goosebumps erupt all over MJ’s body “May I please eat myself off of you?” 

By the time the video ended, MJ was teetering on the edge of making herself come, drenched and slick from having alternated between letting the vibrator rub against her clit with no vibration, and rubbing along her lips and slit while on the lowest setting. She rarely let herself come to the videos she watched because she got off on making herself wait through minutes of teasing before letting herself have what she’d been wanting, but sometimes she just can’t hold out. When she does though, her orgasms are mind-numbingly good.

With the intent to reward herself, she set the vibration setting to medium and finally let the toy slip lower between her slick lips and into her entrance. She was so worked up by the visuals the video had provided that she had a hard time controlling herself as she clenched around the intruding toy. 

As she slowly filled herself with it, she thought of the man on her phone screen, how earnest he seemed at the start of it versus how wonton he was by the end. How in awe he was of the woman he was with, ready to do whatever she said. She thought about the way he kissed her and how he played with her nipples, how he looked at the camera and asked permission to pleasure her in each new way, whining with big blown black eyes. She turned the vibration on the toy up another notch, finding the fleshy mound of her gspot and rocking her hips fiercely to press it to the thick head. 

There was something so familiar to her about it, something that made her skin feel like it was on fire as she fucked herself harder with each thrust. She couldn’t put her finger on _what_ and was in too much pleasure to think too hard about it. Instead, she tried to imagine herself in the woman’s position. How would it feel to be on the receiving end of someone’s complete desperation? To have them so eager to please you that they would beg you to let them? She moved her vibrator in and out of her, pressing the rabbit head down into her clit. 

In MJ’s mind, she saw a man’s body, naked and glistening, cock-drippingly hard for her. She saw hands on her body, rough against the smooth softness of her skin. She brought her hand up to her nipple and imagined the silky warmness of a mouth wrapped around it, sucking it, teasing it, biting it. Her mouth opened in pleasure, orgasm mounting as she stimulated her g-spot, clit, and nipple all at once. She imagined the man inside her, thrusting hard against all the right spots, twitching and jerking with every clench she offered him until he begged her in a broken voice, _Peter’s_ broken voice if he can come. In her mind, she watched Peter’s face as she granted him permission to lose himself inside her, mouth hanging open and eyes screwed up as he let out a moan that she didn’t know until just then she’d been dying to hear. 

Her body convulsed at the image, lost in a pleasure-seeking high that she never even knew she could reach as her mind fed her one last terrible, horrible, unbelievably gluttonous image. 

Peter’s face sweaty and red like it looks right after he’s been in a fight, his eyes so heartfelt and gentle like they are when he tells her he’s proud of her, his lips swollen and bitten like he’s telling her his deepest secret, all focused up at her from between her thighs just to ask “Can I please eat myself out of you?” 

And then, like a spaceship jumping into warp drive, the edges of her vision stretched into blurs as she tumbled over the edge at breakneck speed. All the breath in her body gone, every atom that made her up frozen in place as her orgasm crashed through her in long, overwhelming waves that didn’t stop for much longer than she’d ever known an orgasm to last. 

After a lengthy while of just laying there in a haze of post-orgasmic bliss, the “oh shit” element of what had happened started to occur to her.

She had masturbated to Peter. Like. Not just to someone who looks kind of like him, which she had definitely been guilty of after the incident with his ass in the dressing room, but to _him._ To the visual of his gorgeous body, sure, but also, to the way he makes her feel. The looks he gives her that she knows belong only to her, the way that he is when he’s his most comfortable. She’d not just gotten off to the thought of him fucking her, she’d gotten off to the thought of him lovingly desiring her. Wanting to make her feel completely undone. Giving her all of him and being rewarded with all of her in return. 

She’d cum harder than she ever had in her entire life to the thought of Peter Parker _making love to her. \_

She immediately panicked, tried to rationalize it, clung helplessly to excuses like “well the onlyfans guy does kind of look like Peter” as if that didn’t have its own set of implications she didn’t want to parse through. She tried desperately to write it off as a fluke or an innocent appreciation that she’d developed for his objectively beautiful physique. 

It didn’t work.

The first time, it _had_ been a complete accident. All the times after that? All the nights she’s fallen off that very same cliff into impossibly deep pools of pleasure at the mere idea of him being hers to command and devour? All the times she’s let herself get lost in the scenarios her mind cooks up for her? MJ has no excuse for those.

All she can do is tell herself that, like all crushes that are horrible and shouldn’t be acknowledged, it will pass. 

It has to pass, right? 

**III.**

MJ pulls into her parking spot in the lot outside her apartment. It's one of those days where she’s not entirely sure how she didn’t get into an accident on the way home. Her mind was nowhere near what was happening on the road, body moving completely on auto-pilot as she suffered through the normal 20 minutes of traffic between the hospital and the complex that she’s lived in for the past year. 

She’s exhausted in a way that feels permanent and total. She can _feel_ how much she needs to take a shower. Nothing in the world sounds better to her than stripping and crawling into her bed. She can’t do that though. In about 11 hours, she’s gotta be back at the hospital for another 12-hour shift, and not only is she out of clean scrubs to wear, she’s also on her last pair of clean underwear, which means the load of laundry that she’s been putting off for the past two weeks has to be done. 

She pulls herself miserably out of the driver’s seat, beat-up old white tennis shoes hitting hard against the pavement of the lot as she reaches out and grabs her bag from the front seat. If someone had told her four years ago when she’d decided to major in nursing so she could work for a few years and save up for PA school that it would lead to days like today, she’s not entirely sure she’d have gone through with her plan. As it stands, she would very much like to take the rest of the week to sleep and cry and try her best to forget about the previous 12 hours. 

When she was in school, her clinical rotations in nursing homes and clinics never seemed to hit her quite as hard as working in the hospital seemed to be. It’s only been four months, but the amount of genuine hell she’s been put through in that four months makes it feel like several long years and if she’s honest, she isn’t entirely sure she’s cut out for this. But after everything she’s done to get here, all the debt she’s gone into for this degree, that’s definitely not something she’s willing to admit to anyone. 

The walk to the apartment from her parking spot takes exactly 3 minutes. Just enough time for her to carefully tuck away the soul-crushing defeat that her shift has left her feeling. That’s no one’s problem but hers, and she doesn’t have time for it right now. Her normal course of action when she faces days like this is to just ignore it. What else can she really do? Laundry needs to be done, dinner acquired, a shower taken. There is no time for her to wallow and reflect and process. 

She reaches apartment 421, again on autopilot, and stumbles into the sight of Peter Parker folding laundry and watching The Good Place on her couch. 

“Um. Hello,” MJ manages, momentarily frozen in place. 

Peter looks over at her for a moment and then goes to pause the TV. “Hey Em. How was work?” 

“Uh, it was—” MJ starts, frowning at him, “Um…” She looks behind her and then back at him for a moment before quickly shaking herself. “What...why are you...what are you doing here?” 

“Oh, um,” Peter looks down at the scrub top he was in the middle of putting on a felt hanger when she walked in. “Laundry.” He smiles widely. 

MJ blinks. “Yeah, I noticed. Um...why?” She takes another step into the apartment and squints. “Is that my laundry?” 

“Yes. I came over to make dinner and do laundry.” Peter answers, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. 

There’s a pause where MJ just stares at him as he gently rests the top on the pile of other clothes she usually hangs instead of folds. “Peter, why are you doing my laundry and making dinner in my apartment?”

Peter picks up another piece of clothing, one of her bralettes, and starts untwisting the pads inside the cups, something so intimate that watching it almost makes MJ blush. “I needed to do my laundry here because the machines in my building are broken again and I couldn’t afford to go to a laundromat. I was exhausted from patrol this morning so I took a nap while the clothes were drying and when I woke up I noticed that your laundry hamper was overflowing so I decided to throw them in for you because I know you’ve got another shift tomorrow. Then I decided to make dinner for you because you’re my best friend and I love you.” He flashes a winning smile in her direction. “And I didn’t want you to be mad at me for crashing here without your permission today.” 

MJ just looks at him for a minute, unsure how to respond, overwhelmed at the idea that Peter has been doing her depression laundry for her all day, that he’s seen the mess of her apartment without any last-minute febreezing of the couch cushions or dirty dishes hidden under soapy water. It’s not like he’d never seen how her dorm room looked during finals week, or what she’s like when she’s deep in the pit of a depressive episode, but she’s always there when he does. She can tailor what he sees to what she’s comfortable with. This— him being here now— that’s no holds barred access to her embarrassing inability to maintain a home-like the adult she claims to be. It makes her want to hide her face and never speak to him again. 

But this is Peter, she’s talking about. Peter Parker. Trash-goblin, 4 jobs in the last 12 months, always has some sort of gruesome injury, literally eats anything even if he found it in the garbage, Peter Parker. Peter Parker her best friend and biggest cheerleader, the man who has been by her side during every horrible and unimaginable part of the past 7 years. The one who pinned her at her graduation ceremony when she’d first become a nurse and held up her phone to FaceTime with her grandparents when their flight got so delayed that they’d missed it. The one who learned how to braid her hair for her when she’d tripped down the stairs outside of the university library and broken her wrist. The one who drove her to her Dad’s funeral. Apparently, the one who sees her embarrassing mess of an apartment and just decides to help instead of showing any inkling of judgment. 

Peter Parker, the man that she’s so stupidly in love with, so humiliatingly attracted to, just looking at him makes her wanna die. 

She can’t seem to stop looking at him though. His stupid face is so beautiful in the lowlight of her shitty Ikea lamp, all jawlines and cheekbones, and that dumb messed up eyebrow that never lays correctly. She can’t stop looking at his hands holding her laundry, his eyes earnest and kind, his smile open and inviting as he tries to grin his way out of her being angry with him, as if she ever would be. All of it is just— too much. 

Without her consent, she feels the sudden inescapable urge to cry. And after everything that she’s been through in the day, she has no energy left to fight it. Her eyes slowly fill to the brim with tears and then they spill heavily down her cheeks. 

Peter’s face falls completely. “Oh no, oh my god, Em. I’m so sorry. I was just being stupid I didn’t mean to uh —” He stammers out even as MJ shakes her head. “I didn’t mean to invade your space or anything.” 

“No.” She keeps shaking her head, nose starting to snot up as tears keep falling. “No Peter, it’s not you. You’re—” She heaves out a hard sob. “You’re so perfect. This is so nice. I just—” Before she can stop herself, her bag falls to the ground and her hands are coming up to hide her face as it crumples. “I just had a really bad day at work.” 

Peter stands quietly for a minute before making his way soundlessly to her and wrapping her up in a hug. They stay like that for a good five minutes or so, MJ’s weeping muffled by the cloth of his sweater as he rubs his hand up and down his back. 

“Do you,” He mumbles, taking a second to clear his throat. “Do you want to talk about it?” He ventures carefully. 

MJ takes a deep breath, sucking the snot noisily back into her nose, and then feeling very embarrassed by the noise it makes. “My patient died,” she murmurs, but she knows Peter can hear her. “They’ve been my patient off and on for the past 3 weeks, and I thought they were getting better, but they—” She swallows thickly trying to hold back the urge to keep crying. “They didn’t make it. I had to call his daughter and tell her and I just…” 

She can’t finish, the awfulness of it sitting horribly inside her chest like a physical weight. Thoughts of her father in his hospital bed fly through her mind like they have the entire day, distorted memories of the phone call she’d received right as she was walking into an organic chemistry final from a nurse with the same horrible news she’s now had to deliver to several people. Her stomach turns at the thought that all she’ll ever be to the family of those patients is a voice on the other side of a line, telling them the worst thing they could ever hear. They’ll never know how hard she worked to save them. 

Peter’s arms around her are firm like they always are, and she can smell her lavender Old Spice deodorant mix with his Peter smell in a way that feels so much more like home than anything in this stupid apartment ever has and she knows, _knows_ , that she shouldn’t let herself have this, but just like all of those nights alone with nothing but her imagination and her collection of toys, she doesn’t have it in her to stop herself. She wants to sink into a world where all she has to do is stay right here and wait for everything else to work itself out. 

“I don’t know if I'm cut out for this,” she admits, very quietly, defeat heavy in her tone.

Her words sit between them for a second. Peter’s arms tighten around her body, his hand more insistent as he strokes her back, and she waits for him to say something to try and talk her down but instead he just lets out a tiny little laugh. 

“Why are you laughing?” MJ asks, a little indignant. 

Peter shakes his head against hers. “Nothing,” he responds. “It’s just that I think I probably say that twice a day.” He laughs again. “It’s just super relatable.” 

She takes a second to mull that over, trying to figure out if that’s comforting to know or just a sad reflection on the both of them. She’s not sure, probably a little of both, but something about it does make her feel less like she’s living a lie. 

“Yeah?” She wonders aloud. 

“Totally.” He confirms. Then he pulls back to look at her face, bringing an over calloused thumb up to swipe a tear away. “Look, Em. I know you. I know you did everything you could to make sure your patient stayed alive. If anything is a reflection of whether or not you’re cut out for this, it’s the fact that you take this so seriously. You know what it’s like to be on the other end of a phone call from a nurse, telling you your loved one has passed away, and you bring that knowledge into everything you do. It doesn’t make you worse at your job that you care so much, it makes you better.” 

MJ looks at him, trying to let his words sink in before letting her head fall back and snorting back all the snot that’s fallen. “It's just so exhausting,” she breathes out. 

Peter pulls her back into a hug. “I can only imagine. Is there anything I can do for you to make it a bit easier?”

MJ lets out a disgusting and bubbly snort. “Are you kidding?” She pulls back from the hug to cover her face, shaking her head. “You’ve done so much already. You’ve seen my depression pit of an apartment and haven’t run away screaming,” she only half-jokes. 

“Please,” Peter says, waving a dismissive hand. “I love it here. It feels lived in and everything smells like lavender. I’d move in if you let me, but I know you like your space.” He smiles, walking into the kitchen.

She watches him, walking in and warming up the pasta he made, like the kitchen is his own. She thinks about their conversation and all the ways that he continues to endear himself to her, even as he actively throws himself into harm's way every single day, scaring her half to death in the process. She watches him be the kind of partner to her that she’s always dreamed of having, and then she asks herself if she would be willing to risk losing this by trying to make something romantic work. 

And the answer is obvious: of course not. 

**IV.**

It becomes a thing. 

Sometimes MJ will get home from work, or from the Gym, or even from a date, and Peter will be on her couch doing laundry or in her kitchen cooking or in her bed napping. He’s not particularly good at any of these tasks. MJ has noticed that some of her white tank tops are a little bit blue now, and most of the time he cycles through the same three or four dishes that he knows how to make, and he spends less time actually sleeping in her bed than he does tossing and turning and finding increasingly worse excuses to chat with her, but it’s such a sweet gesture that she can’t find it in herself to care. 

This is Peter’s thing, it’s his move. If she takes a step back to examine how exactly they’ve become as close as they are, the process followed a similar pattern. MJ doesn’t open herself up to people easily, and she especially wasn’t easy to get to know when she was a teenager, but Peter cut through her outward stoicism with almost suspicious ease.

She’d liked him from second one, despite the fact that he’s a complete mess of a human being. Something about his try-hard nature, fighting spirit, and ironically his inability to lie effectively put her at ease. She recognized that unlike most people she’d encountered in life, Peter operates on a really simple set of moral convictions. Convictions that mostly lead to horrible situations in which his life is constantly put in danger and MJ’s doctor is concerned she has developed hypertension at age 24, but still. 

Even with her normal internal panic at letting anyone see her when she’s vulnerable, Peter had found his way into her inner circle through a delicate combination of casual acts of extraordinary thoughtfulness, like remembering small details in stories from her childhood with striking clarity and using them as inspiration for birthday and Christmas gifts, and routine moments of unbelievable idiocy, like trying to electrocute a giant evil lizard in a sewage tunnel and ending up just short of being a barbecued spider, that she’d had no choice but to confront how much the little fucker meant to her on a near-daily basis. 

Now it’s the same shit, except he’s older and somehow even more considerate and brave, and he _thinks_ he’s smarter, so MJ’s got her work cut out for her. She’s stuck loving him— romantically, unfortunately, yes —but more than that, platonically, familially. In a way that somehow combines all three. It’s disgusting and gives her a headache and scares her more than anything in the whole world. 

The laundry and the food and the company—it’s Peter’s way of taking care of her, and it’s incidentally exactly what she needs. It’s not constant. He’s not over there weekly or anything, but every now and again, just when MJ thinks he might stop, he’ll be there, wearing gray sweatpants and an old, tight science pun tee shirt and also inevitably sporting some disgusting injury that almost completely cancels out the hotness of any outfit he could wear. Almost. At this point, MJ isn’t sure if her nearly constant urge to wrap her fingers around his neck is driven by lust or the desire to put him out of his misery. 

“Dude you know what I realized earlier today? Peter asks around a big bite of gummy worms before plopping down next to MJ on the couch. 

It’s August 10th at 11:36 pm and Peter has convinced her that, if for no other reason than that it’s his birthday tomorrow, they should watch his 3 favorite movies. 

Empire Strikes Back and Princess Bride were a given, and despite not being her own favorites, she liked them well enough that she’d said yes without really thinking about what the other could be. Lucky for her, it’s only one of the greatest love stories ever written, with iconic scenes that make even her cold dead suppressed heart beat a little faster in her chest. As an added bonus, she gets to watch just how ardently Mr. Darcy loves Elizabeth right next to the person she’s silently longing for the very same way. 

She doesn’t respond, just raises her eyebrows and glances in his direction for a moment before going back to watching the movie. 

“I don’t know who your celebrity crushes are,” he continues easily. “Like— you’re one of the beneficiaries of my life insurance policy and I don’t know what celebrities you wanna fuck. There’s something deeply wrong about that.”

MJ turns her head slowly to look at Peter and blinks. “What?”

“I’m just saying.” He shrugs, completely noncommittal. “I’ve told you all about the way I feel about Oscar Issac and what I would let Viola Davis do to me. I think maybe I’ve heard you say that Pedro Pascal is attractive but that’s about it. I want—nay, I _deserve_ — the dirty details. It’s only fair.” 

MJ can only stare blankly for a few seconds before she finally shakes her head and frowns. “ _I’m one of the beneficiaries of your life insurance policy_?” She repeats, incredulously. Then another thought occurs to her. “You found an insurance company that would take you on as a policyholder?” 

“I know, it was hard for me to believe too, but Mr. Stark did his thing, or to be more accurate, he had Mrs. Potts do her thing, and I was approved. So that was that.” He takes another mouthful of gummies and then says, “Anyway, back to your celebrity wank bank. I think I can tell by the way you reacted to Robin Wright whenever she was on screen that you’re into blondes, so I’m hazarding a guess at Florence Pugh.” 

“But—” MJ can’t stop frowning at him, trying her best to process his words. “But _why?”_

“Well I mean,” he offers another shrug. “She’s really hot.” 

MJ lets out a grumble of frustration, rolling her eyes at him. “Not why Florence Pugh,” she says in exasperation. “Why am I a beneficiary of your life insurance policy?” 

“Oh, that.” Peter looks over at her with a stupid little guilty grin on his face. “Didn’t I already tell you about that?” 

MJ lets her eyes close for a moment as she tries to control her tone. “No, Pete. You haven't mentioned it.”

“Oh,” He says simply, pursing his lips. “That’s my bad. Here.” He sets down the bag of gummies and turns himself so he’s looking into MJ's face wearing a falsely sober expression. “Em, I need to talk to you about something serious.” He takes MJ’s hand and holds it between his own, squeezing it a few times. “I’ve been thinking of making you one of the beneficiaries of my life insurance policy, but I wanted to talk to you about it before I made anything official.” 

MJ glares at him and pulls her hand out of his grasp. “Peter this is a big deal. You can’t just name me as a beneficiary for something like this and not tell me. I-I...” She stammers at him, overwhelmed. She doubles down on her glare while she attempts to collect her thoughts. “I don’t even know how to feel about this.” 

“Em, this is a good thing,” Peter replies, still annoyingly nonplussed by the conversation, despite the fact that MJ feels like he’s just dropped a huge bomb on her. 

“No, it’s not,” MJ argues back. “It’s-it’s horrible.” She can feel herself getting more worked up the more she thinks about it. Life insurance policies aren’t the kind of thing she likes thinking about. She’s been the beneficiary of them before, and it’s never meant anything good for her. They only ever lead to guilt and frustration and so much fucking grief that she feels swallowed up by it. She remembers how complicated it had been for her after her father had passed away. Her grandparents did their best to help, but they were so far away and just a touch too old to understand a lot of the technical processes, so the funeral plans and arrangements mostly fell to her.

She remembers getting a direct deposit a few months after the death for an absurd amount of money and having to figure out what to do with it. It was the worst feeling in the world. The thing she never seemed to have enough of growing up, suddenly available to her, and yet the circumstances through which it was acquired soured every part of having it. She couldn’t even use a bit of it to order take-out without feeling like she was benefitting from her father’s suffering. And now Peter wants to do the same to her, only this time, she won’t have the opportunity to prepare for it. She won’t have the chance to acclimate to the idea of a world without one of the people she loves the most, Peter will just be dead and she’ll find out about it from the news and a call from a lawyer telling her she needs to make arrangements.

“MJ listen, I know I should have—” Peter tries to say. MJ cuts him off. 

“No, Peter, you listen. I-I don’t know why you would just expect that I’d be okay with this, but I’m not.” She looks at him with hard eyes. 

“You’re not?” Peter asks her, tone unreadable. MJ swallows and takes a breath, shaking her head. He studies her for a beat, giving her a look that she’s never seen from him that makes her feel like she’s being read like a book. “Can I ask you why?” He finally says. 

MJ looks back at him and then averts her eyes once more, trying to find something, some string of words that will fit all the different feelings she’s trying to parse through. “I don’t know,” she huffs out. “I just—” She turns to face him. “I don’t think I can handle the responsibility of it.”

Peter nods. “I get that. I know that it’s overwhelming to think about having to make plans around my death. I can look into removing you from the policy,” he offers. 

She takes a few deep breaths at his words, calming herself enough to ask the original question she’d had for him. “Why did you include me in the policy in the first place? Why not put May or Ned?” 

Peter gives her a look like she’d asked the stupidest question on earth. “Well first— Mr. Stark has already promised me that May will be taken care of no matter what happens to me, and I trust him to make good on that. I don’t think May would take the money if I just left it to her and I don’t want her to have to plan another funeral, she already had to do it so many times. And as far as Ned goes, I’ve left very specific instructions about what you’re supposed to do with the money. But more than any of that, I included you because you’re my family, MJ. It’s my job to take care of you, even if I’m dead.” His tone is as if he’s saying the simplest thing on earth. 

“Oh,” MJ says in surprise. “I didn’t realize you’d done all that.” She very deftly avoids his last sentence.

“Yes. I—“ he gives her a soft smile. “I know that I have a higher likelihood of not coming back to you all at the end of the than most people do. I wanted to make sure that things move forward the way that will honor my dumbass legacy. May was so broken after Ben passed, I just don’t think she could handle all of my requests. Plus I left messages for you that tell you where I keep all my sex toys and weed, May’s pretty cool but I think that’s a touch too much to ask of her.” 

“Peter,” She groans in response, bringing her hands up to rub her temples. “Only you could make me feel this way.” She moves her wrist out of the way to shoot him a frustrated look. “I was on the verge of a panic attack thinking about having to manage that money. How could I forget that you are the most ridiculous human being on earth and would never let me have even a moment’s peace, even in your death.” 

Peter looks like he’s honestly thinking about it before shaking his head and saying, “I don’t know. After nearly a decade of friendship, you really should know better. I fully intend to terrorize you for the rest of your life, P.S. I Love You style if it comes to it.” 

MJ rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “Please tell me you’re joking.” 

Peter grins at her playfully. “Hopefully you’ll never know.” He looks at her like he already knows her answer. “Do you still want me to take you off the policy?” 

MJ glares at him again, annoyed beyond belief that he’s actually done what he set out to do, and intrigued her just enough that she can’t help but want to say yes. “If I didn’t know for a fact that you’d accept it graciously if I said yes I’d be mad at you for this” 

Peter’s smile grows. “Is that a no?” 

MJ sighs, defeated. “Yes. Please keep me on the policy.” 

Peter does a celebratory little dance and then settles back into his previous position, webbing his gummy bears over to him from the coffee table in front of them. 

They go back to watching the movie, silently. Peter munches on snacks and mindlessly mumbles his favorite lines along with the characters grinning as the story progresses his favorite scenes play out. Multiple times MJ catches her eyes wandering over to him rather than the movie and she has to force herself not to keep looking. It’s hard. Peter is much more entertaining than the movie, but she knows with his spidey sense he’ll notice her.

Instead, she focuses on what is playing on the screen and tries to focus on the story that’s unfolding. MJ’s always thought that although Jane Austin was a gorgeous writer, there’s always something missing from on-screen adaptations of her movies. The build-up she offers in the prose is, for MJ, the best part of watching any two of her characters fall in love. She remembers reading these books when she was much younger, maybe 13 or 14, and thinking to herself that love like what was written into novels like that was more of a fantasy than Harry Potter. Cynicism has always been in her nature and even now there is a part of her that wants to roll her eyes at the characters and how they’re acting, but then, she can relate more to the way love can drive you half-crazy than she ever thought she’d be able to. 

Maybe that’s enough, she thinks. Maybe proving to herself that she can love someone as much as she loves Peter is enough. She doesn’t need to act on it for the love to be real, and she doesn’t need to break her own heart to know for sure that her heart would be broken. Maybe if she just sits in it and lets it be the truth, after a while it won’t be like this. 

But then, as if the Gods have timed it perfectly, Elizabeth is walking in the fields, Mr. Darcy finds her and he confesses that she has bewitched him, mind, body, and spirit and MJ watches Elizabeth realize the extent of her love, and takes his hand, both metaphorically and physically. And MJ thinks about what it might mean to not only love someone that much, but have them too. She considers the way it feels when she looks at Peter’s face and the reason it’s so fucking terrifying to even imagine letting herself be honest with him about how he’s bewitched her. 

For a long while now, MJ’s known that there is a very big difference between a thing that she wants and a thing that she needs. She’s spent studying herself with rapt attention trying to separate out a luxury from a necessity, something that she’d noticed was all too common among her other friends who’d come from working-class homes and then gone on to start making decent money. Sometimes it was as simple as reminding herself that buying the nicer brand of coffee maker will save her the cost of always wanting to buy coffee, and other times it was as complex as reminding herself that getting the more expensive car with a better insurance policy and 24/7 roadside service is not unusual or selfish. She’s used to depriving herself of what she needs because she’s always too aware of the cost. She looks over at Peter and thinks that maybe this applies to him too. 

Peter is exactly what she needs. Someone who willingly jumps off of skyscrapers and flies in front of bullets every day, that does not shy away from a challenge, and because of all that, is not intimidated by MJ’s formidable attempts at pushing people away. He is the kind of person that will love her with begrudging intensity, like he’d said to her tonight, until the day she dies, even from beyond the grave. _That,_ that kind of companionship? That kind of partner? That is not something she wants. It’s something she needs. 

And when she looks over at him, her heart pounding her chest, she knows in every part of her heart that it’s the truth. That she’ll spend the rest of her life living a lie if she doesn’t tell him the truth now before he pulls his next idiotic, wonderful, heroic stunt, and doesn’t make it back to her. 

“It’s you,” she breathes out, quietly. But again, Peter hears. 

He turns big, adorable eyes over to her, clearly confused as the end credits start to roll on the movie, and asks, “what?” 

And she just stares at his beautiful, dumb face, nose kinky from having been broken a million times over, lip still kind of healing from when he’d busted it the day before. She offers him a nervous smile. “That’s my celebrity crush,” she confesses, quietly. “You.” 

Peter blinks at her a few times more and then smiles. “What?” he repeats, a slight hopefulness in his voice. 

MJ feels her heart jump into her throat, nerves ramping up to 10x the rate they’d been when she’d opened her mouth a second ago and she half panics and considers playing it off, but she can’t just lie to him. Not outright. Not anymore. “I—” she starts, weakly, struggling immensely to find the right way to put it. “You’re, uh—Um, what I mean is—I’m—” She lets out a loud groan of frustration, looking at him with a frown when she sees that he’s smiling wider. “I love you,” she rushes to get out. “I’m in love with you. Mind, body, spirit, all that Mr. Darcy shit. I-I don’t know why I’m saying this. I can’t believe I am, to be honest. I just. You were talking about how you’ll love me until even when you’re dead and I-I-I don’t want that. I don’t want that to happen before I tell you this. Even if you don’t feel the same way or-or whatever. I know it complicates things and you’ve already got such a complicated life, and this won’t help that, but I—” 

“Em,” Peter interrupts, gently leaning in a little bit to take her hand. “Em, listen. You gotta take a breath.” He makes pointed eye contact with her and sucks a big breath in, inviting her to mimic him. She does, and for a moment they just sit there, breathing. Peter rubs his calloused thumbs over the back of her hand. “You okay?” he asks her, a tiny bit of concern in his eyes. 

“Um,” MJ gives herself a mental once over, trying to figure out if she can feel her feet. After brushing them against the carpet and feeling the texture she nods. “Yeah, I think so,” she replies. 

Peter raises his eyebrows at her. “Are you sure?” 

MJ takes another deep breath and bites at her lip again. “Yeah,” she nods again. 

“Okay,” Peter breathes out in relief. “Good. Because I love you too. I’m in love with you. Completely. Totally. Horribly.” 

MJ’s eyes go wide, her heart doing leaps and jumps in her chest, without her consent. “What?” she says, feeling half-mad as the words register and then register again. 

Instead of answering, Peter just leans forward, looks deep into her eyes, brings his hand up to cup her face, and then whispers, “Can I kiss you, please?” Pausing as he awaits her permission, and it’s _that_ more than anything else that officially shuts down her overactive brain. 

“Please,” she nearly whines out, closing the distance between their mouths in a hard, almost bruising kiss. 

+1

When MJ wakes up the next morning, the sun hasn’t even risen outside her window. She looks over at the other side of her bed where Peter should be sleeping, exhausted after spending the past several hours _thoroughly_ exploring the new dimension to their relationship. That’s how she feels, at least, far enough away from her post-orgasm glow that the ache in her thighs and her back is making its presence known as she sits up on her elbows and looks around the room for Peter. 

Nothing is there. An anxious pull of something sour opens up in her stomach as the immediate thought that he’s left runs through her mind. But before that thought can really go anywhere, she hears the soft muffled sound of Peter’s voice coming from the living room. She breathes a sigh of relief quickly followed by a groan of pain as she forces her heavy limbs out from the protection of the blanket and pads as quietly as she can to the door to peek out of it. 

From her vantage point, she can see that Peter is sitting on the floor in front of her couch, his phone propped up on her TV stand across from him. She makes a move to open the door wider and walk out when his voice startles her. 

“Okay, take 21. Hi MJ, it’s me,” He starts, looking at the camera. “If you’re watching this, it means that I've gone and died on you. Let me start by apologizing for that. It was very inconsiderate of me. I hope though, that you can take some comfort in knowing that I love you, so much. Right now it’s the morning of my 25th birthday. If you’re seeing this far enough in the future that you don’t remember, we just had incredible sex for the first time ever.” He grins at the camera, in a stupid way that makes her heart beat a little faster. “Hopefully not the last,” he adds. 

“Look, I don’t know what’s gonna come of what we told each other last night, but I’ve got a feeling that it’s the most important thing that’s gonna happen to me in my life, so I wanted to film this for you. I’ve got no clue what you and I are to one another at the time that you’re watching this, but I do know that no matter what, I know you’re still my favorite person. There are gonna be a couple of different videos after this one that the lawyer will give you to watch. They’re gonna have some pretty specific instructions about what you should do with the money from my life insurance policy, and they'll require you to go on a couple of pretty big adventures. But before you see any of that, I just want to say thank you for however much time we’ve gotten to spend together. Whether it’s just the two of us watching movies and eating the shitty pasta I’ve cooked for us or breaking lamps in the throes of passion. Sorry again, about that, by the way. You’re my best friend, and I love you.” He smiles one more time, leaning forward to press the record button. 

MJ swallows softly, closing the door as gently as she can before tiptoeing back to her bed and quietly climbing in it. Once she’s tucked back under the blanket, she lets herself think about what she’s just seen. Peter, being the most Peter he could possibly be. Always soft and open when she’s nervous he’ll be hard and closed off. So good at his core that she feels guilty for ever thinking that telling him about her feelings, even if he didn’t reciprocate, would ruin their friendship. She knows why it’s so hard for her to believe that things can work out positively for her, but it’s still a little embarrassing that she requires so much proof before trusting someone completely. But—if that’s who she is— she’s not sure there is anyone more equipped to assuage her anxiety than Peter Parker. 


End file.
